Hud (Hud) هود 116–117
116
فَلَوْلاَ كَانَ مِنَ الْقُرُونِ مِن قَبْلِكُمْ أُوْلُواْ بَقِيَّةٍ يَنْهَوْنَ عَنِ الْفَسَادِ فِي الأَرْضِ إِلاَّ قَلِيلاً مِّمَّنْ أَنجَيْنَا مِنْهُمْ وَاتَّبَعَ الَّذِينَ ظَلَمُواْ مَا أُتْرِفُواْ فِيهِ وَكَانُواْ مُجْرِمِينَ
Why, then, were there not among the generations before you upright men who would speak out against the [spread of] corruption on earth—except for the few whom We saved? But the wrongdoers pursued their worldly pleasures and thus became guilty.
117
وَمَا كَانَ رَبُّكَ لِيُهْلِكَ الْقُرَى بِظُلْمٍ وَأَهْلُهَا مُصْلِحُونَ
Your Lord would never unjustly destroy communities while their people were trying to reform.
No class discussions published for this verse group yet.
a Here ‘generation before you’ means previous People of the Book, i.e. believing communities. A community faces ruination when the worldly good things given by God to its people with the purpose of developing feelings of gratitude in them, become instead a source of lust and create the urge to seek after material things. Under these circumstances, the tasks which need to be carried out for the reformation of the Muslim community are known in the terminology of the Islamic law as al-Amr bi’l-Ma‘ruf wa’n-Nahy ‘an al-Munkar, that is, exhorting righteousness and preventing individuals from indulging in sinful acts. This admonition specifies the responsibility placed on a Muslim with regard to his immediate neighbours. This means that in a Muslim society, there should always be some individuals who should remind Muslims of God and the Hereafter, who should keep a watch on people’s morals and who should try to keep them on the right path in all their dealings. The non-existence of such righteous individuals in a community is generally for one of two reasons—either the whole community has morally deteriorated and there is not a single righteous person left in it. Or else, there may still be certain righteous people, but due to the all-pervasive evil, they may not be able to find the courage to open their mouths. They may be afraid that if they spoke the Truth, they would lose the respect of their community. In both the above-mentioned cases, the community loses God’s esteem and becomes liable to be afflicted by God’s retribution in one form or the other.